As a tight vote count continues in the Last Frontier's Senate race, The Daily Beast's Shushannah Walshe reveals that Republicans are quietly testing a third-party path for Lisa Murkowski.

The count in the Alaskan Senate Republican primary continues for the second day with Joe Miller still in the lead, but the drama is heating up. The Daily Beast has learned exclusively that an individual independent of Lisa Murkowski’s campaign has commissioned a poll to see how she would fare if she ran as a third-party candidate under the Libertarian Party.

The poll is being commissioned by Andrew Halcro, a former Republican state legislator, Murkowski supporter, and Sarah Palin critic. He ran against Palin in the 2006 governor’s race as an independent in both the primary and general election. He also used to have a blog focusing on political issues and was the first to question if Palin had abused her power when she fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, leading to the Troopergate investigation.

Halcro has reached out to other local Republicans to help fund the poll, which will be done by GOP pollster David Dittman starting this weekend.

In an email message, Joe Miller responded to the news of the survey, “There already was a poll. It's called a primary.”

“I think [Murkowski’s] got to get out there because I think in a wider open field with a weak Democratic candidate and the other choice being Joe [Miller] on the extreme, I think Lisa has a shot and she has money in the bank and she has name-recognition,” Halcro said.

Halcro wants to encourage Murkowski to join the Libertarian line if she does not make up her ballot deficit when the counting of absentee ballots is completed September 8.

But the race is getting nasty. According to documentation received by The Daily Beast, Joe Miller’s legal counsel, Thomas Van Flein, has filed a formal protest with the Alaska Division of Elections against a Murkowski campaign absentee-ballot observer.

Van Flein sent a letter to Division of Elections director Gail Fenumiai and asked that Bonnie Jack be “disbarred as a qualified observer in any region for the duration of this primary and general campaign year.”

Van Flein alleges that Jack “used confidential voter information outside the voter observation confines and called a voter to resurrect a disqualified ballot.”

Halcro said he believes the poll will show that Murkowski can pull off a third-party run, even on the Libertarian line, “It will be a snapshot of her positives and negatives after the primary and it’s going to be statewide, all voters, because the polls up to now have been only those who have been able to keep the Republican ballot so now we are going to look at a wider picture.”

It’s not clear if the Murkowski camp knows about the poll and they were not available for comment. Halcro spoke to Murkowski Thursday morning, but did not tell her about the poll. Halcro said Murkowski is positive the absentee ballots will put her over the edge, “Lisa said she is still very optimistic that the votes are going to come her way.”

Halcro said he believes that Murkowski has eight days after she finds out whether she beat Miller or not to strike a deal with the Libertarians.

At the moment, Miller leads by 1,668 votes and the Alaska Division of Elections is counting absentee ballots. Some 16,000 ballots were requested and mailed out and by Thursday they had received back about 9,500. The deadline to receive ballots from the state and from the rest of the country is September 3 and for military and overseas ballots, September 8. All ballots must be postmarked by August 24th, Election Day. According to the Division of Elections, in addition to the potential 16,000 ballots that could return by September 8th, the Division of Elections is also counting in-person absentee ballots or early voting, ballots cast by individuals that are elderly or were not healthy enough to make it to the polls on Tuesday, and faxed ballots. Sources in the room where they are counting the votes say almost 80 percent of the returned ballots are Republican, a positive sign for Murkowski.

Dittman confirmed that although he is still working on the questionnaire, he would begin polling this weekend and it would last for about five days with results expected next week. Both Halcro and Dittman say that this is being done completely independent of the Murkowski campaign. This is an important point because it could be construed as an illegal campaign contribution if Halcro commissioned the poll for the Murkowski camp, which they stress they are not doing.

“I did talk to [Halcro] about doing a survey not for one candidate, but what would be the likely outcome if it were a three-person race with Lisa as one of the candidates and Joe Miller and Scott McAdams as the other candidates,” Dittman said. “This is something Andrew is doing independently of the campaign because it is something he is interested in.”

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